Masaru Kito

Biography

Hideaki Aochi, Ryota Katsumata, and Masaru Kito’s revolutionary BiCS concept has become the standard for realizing high-density and fast three-dimensional (3D) flash memory to meet the needs of the powerful personal devices of today and the future. To overcome the scalability and complexity issues of early 3D flash memory concepts, the team created the new three-dimensional flash memory by punch and plug method, which features a multi-stacked memory array with fewer critical lithography steps and charge-trapping cells for high-density yet cost-effective scalable memory. Their new concept has been widely used in solid-state drive storage systems for smart phones, PCs, and high-performance computers. With the capability for greater than a terabyte density, the team’s innovative 3D flash memory can also replace hard disk drives, with the benefits of no moving parts, smaller footprint, and lower power consumption.

An IEEE member, Kito is a group manager with the Advanced Memory Development Center at KIOXIA Corporation, Mie, Japan.